


Red in Tooth and Claw

by darkling2222



Category: Death Note, Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Relationship(s), Rough Sex, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 23:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkling2222/pseuds/darkling2222
Summary: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?





	Red in Tooth and Claw

**Author's Note:**

> It's honestly so much easier to just plug in poetry I like into the summary slot. This one is the Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

L walks into the hotel room to find B lounging spread eagle on the unused bed, wrinkling the formally untouched comforter. B grins warmly, showing his fangs with a jagged smile.

“Hello, my dear, my dear. I’m back”

 _My dear, my dear,_ a name somewhere between affectionate and sarcastic. 

B rolls onto his side, watching L. He’s wearing a pair of faded jeans and a long sleeved black shirt. It’s inverted mimicry, B likes to play the evil twin and he dresses the part. 

“You certainly weren’t invited back.” L keeps his voice disinterested, sitting cross legged in front of the laptop as if B wasn’t there. L hadn’t seen him in months. B comes and goes at seemingly random but he always comes back like a psycho boomerang, by invitation or otherwise.

It’s always strange to see him in the flesh. B operates at such a theatric intensity he becomes almost unreal, something perversely mythicized. When he’s not with L, B becomes more abstract then fact, a spindly limbed doppelganger born from some bloody legend of gods and monsters. 

When B is there, with bones and tendons all moving under taunt skin, possibilities of the unknown disappear and the ghosts and spooks are swept away. 

In truth, B’s barely grown out of puberty, skinny as a knife blade with eyes just as sharp. And despite all of the blood and bravado, he’s a pitiful sight. He’s still a scrawny, scraggly kid, tangled hair dyed black with an inch of root showing and a sugar obsession as manufactured as his hair color. He’s a mangy whelp of a creature, with greasy hair and eyes that are feverishly bright.

Though, even for the mess that he is, B is a ravaging force of will. There’s a feral unpredictability in him, B is red in tooth and claw, a trickster with a coyote smile. It all speaks more to visceral madness then to anything as glorious as legends.

B sits up, sitting curved on the unused bed, one leg pulled to his chest.

“Oh, I know you missed me. I fuck better than that old mercenary.” Aiber is the one he means, the old mercenary in question has the expertise of someone scandalously well-practiced but anything he and L share is just a business perk. He’s not like B at all and he doesn’t leave half as many hickeys. 

“My tender heart beats faster at the thought of you.” L’s monotone voice oozes sarcasm, making a point of not letting his eyes move off the screen.

“Damn straight.” B’s voice is a purr. He slides his loping limbs off the bed and presses against L’s hunched back, long arm reaching over to play with L’s zipper. Forcing L to notice him. 

B is always begging for attention, offering his mind and his body to abuse just for a pat on the head, a moment of time. B’s tried everything, been everyone, to get that attention from L. He changes his skin like a snake, trying to find the face that catches L’s eye, it’s all desperate and pitiful and psychotic. B had shown up holding a solved case file, drenched in blood and sweat, naked in the bath, offering neatly wrapped presents, holding a gun to his head, holding a gun to L, sobbing, laughing, touching, biting, forcing. 

B’s whole being is defined by a needy hatred, either giving the whole of himself or trying to take back everything stolen from him, a life wasted on worship. B would slice his veins open for L, and in the same motion plunge the knife into the detective’s chest. He forever oscillates between planned perfection and emotional collapse; perfectly suited to commit the murders that were inevitable, written above the victim’s heads. The LABB murders served a dual purpose, a grab at attention and a stab at driving greater guilt into L.

Luckily, today, B’s in a giving mood and he’s playing nice. 

L should shake him off, push B away, get Watari to throw him out. L had done enough to hurt B, he shouldn’t feed his damage by paying him any mind. B always brings about guilt in L’s crooked heart. Without L, he may not have been deranged or he may not have been a tragedy but at the moment he’s both. 

L is weak against the boy pressing against his back and L’s never weak, never. Yet he still drowns in the stormy sea that’s B. There’s a nagging part of him that he may even like B filling up his lungs. 

He leans against the scrawny boy in a resigned sort of way, his eyes drooping shut. He’s not sure if it’s out of desire or surrender. B takes it as consent, not that he would have asked for it, but L can feel B’s smile against his skin. 

“I missed you, my dear, my dear.” His voice is hushed and husky but the nickname is honestly idiotic. “I’ve gotten quite lonely.” They’re past the point of quipping formalities about tender hearts and former lovers and B is being honest.

L isn’t sure where B goes when he’s not with him, where he goes to be lonely, but he always returns. L not being sure is truly saying something. L is always sure, he knows everything about everything but B is the exception that proved the rule. 

L imagines that B must slips into some sort of void space when he’s not with L. He ceases to exist without L. L is the only thing that interests B, and L is what keeps him in his closed circuit of fevered motion, without the older detective he must just stop being. It’s a childish, half formed idea and L winces internally when he realizes that he believes it on some level.

B slips in front of him, between L and the computer, long limbs curled in the detectives lap. His skin is hot against L and L can feel him, hard and throbbing, against the denims of his jeans. B stares at him with unbridled fasciation, like L was something golden and godly. 

L can remember that as a child B’s eyes had been brown, but they bordered on red now, it was as strange as blood drying in reverse.

“Did you miss me? I doubt you did. Killers are so much more important.” The words should be spiteful like some soap opera housewife confronting her husband about his mistress. There’s just an undertone of sadness but it comes as no surprise to either of them. Killers have always been more important. 

B is trying to tease out a kind word, _“oh, no, B you matter so much more to me. I’ve missed you terribly.”_

L doesn’t bite.

B chatters a bit more between the movement of his fingers and lips over L’s skin. B is always talking; his childhood was marked, perhaps marred, by silence. He wants to pump the present with words but L doesn’t answer; he just leans in and kisses B’s chapped lips to hush him. It’s as close as L can get to saying that B matters so much more. 

The kiss is almost an apology, nearly everything L does for B is almost an apology. Anything else he does to B is the cause for apology. L brings his hand up and softly strokes Bs hair and he has to suppress the urge to take the tangled strands in his fist and pull hard, to snap B’s head back and make him bare his jagged teeth. But B is playing nice today and he deserves an almost apology for the effort. 

“I think I love you.”

They’d both been born unable to love or it had been bred out of them at such a young age they couldn’t remember the feeling but B has always liked to play pretend. This is as close as either of them get, something volleying from obsession to vaguely like hatred. They fuck like teenagers with shaking care and fluttering touches but if either one presses too hard or bites too roughly, the game will be over and they’ll go for the kill.

“Don’t be stupid.” He doesn’t think before he says it and his tone is harsh. There’ll be a day that he’ll hear the same words from a high schooler god to his ditzy angel. B is more like Misa then he is like Light, minus the strawberry lip-gloss and black lace.

But in the same vein, B isn’t like Misa. Misa is a love-struck kitten with rhinestone claws and B is the monster under your bed. 

There’s an uneasy pause, B blinks, hurt, pulling away for a moment. 

“I’m not stupid.” B’s voice is tinny and weak. He wants kindness from L, he wants more than an almost apology.

“It isn’t important.” L brushes his words to the side. 

“I’m not…” He’s doe eyed and the words are a pinched whisper, thin and desperate, trailing into hollow silence. The childish effect is ruined by the red of his eyes and the sallow, malnourished tint of his skin. B is a monster who’d forgotten that he isn’t human; it’d break your heart in the most sickening way.

“It doesn’t matter.” L murmurs in a consoling way. L knows it’s terribly hard to be a monster; it’s a comfort to pretend to be something else, anything else. B smiles with sickening adoration, convinced, and nuzzles L’s neck in thanks. 

B really is playing nice because his touch is still fluttering even when L had given him a good excuse to be cruel. He pulls L’s shirt over his head and kisses him down his neck and chest.

L almost wishes B would so he’d have an excuse to attack. He prefers when B is snarling and biting, tasting like copper and heat. L knows everything about brutality but he’s rustier on tenderness especially the shy, shaking affection that B offers with wavering eyes and trembling fingers. 

He wants the familiarity of violence.

They kiss and neck and grope for long minutes, B’s hand slips down Ls jeans. 

B’s every inch a tragedy, a monster with bloody claws and pleading eyes. A gentler heart would try to stitch all his sorry pieces into working order but a clearer mind would slit his throat. L is neither of these things or he’s enough a mix of both that nothing can be done either way. So they dance these steps and stain the floor with the blood from the bottom of their shoes.

“I don’t love you.” the words are distant and clinical but the length of time he waits before replying makes it hesitant. L’s baiting him now, teasing out the creature that resides inside B’s masks and his thousand flittering faces. The mask filters out some of his force, some of the ferocity inside him. 

L sees the manic glint in B’s eyes flit back and his kisses get harsher with teeth and tongue and fingers tightly gripping L’s hard cock. He’s discarded his mask. L is relieved when he feels the aggression, he has a reason to fight now and for some reason that’s what L wants. To eat B’s black rot heart and let the death eyed wolf swallow his down whole. 

B pushes L down onto the floor, straddling and pinning him down, fingers scraping and sliding over L’s bare skin and tying knots in his dark hair. L pushes hard against him, back curved against B’s body. B pulls L’s faded jeans off his hips, the fabric catching on his joints. This is no longer a partnership, they’re being honest now. They’re acting like the killers that they are, not fragile flowers or nasty boyfriends, they’re no longer playing games. L is still the hero and B is still the villain but the distinction is blurred. 

B reaches down and wraps his lips around L’s quivering cock, teeth scraping against his skin, it’s hard to tell if it’s out of clumsiness or dominance. His tongue is quick and clever, paying special attention to L’s head. The older detectives breathing gets heavy, fingers curling against the carpet. L was rigidly awkward against B’s doe eyes and adoration but he’s putty in B’s hands now. 

“Maybe I’ll just hate you instead. You make it easy.” B’s voice is still hushed as he pulls away but there’s an edge to it now, he’s not desperate now, just disdaining. Like he’d had such high hopes and L has done a bang up job of smashing them to bits. Which is extremely true, actually.

L makes a vague noise in response, something between a groan and a sigh and it’s difficult to tell if it’s in response to B’s words or his touch. L strips B down to pale skin, clothes thrown messily onto the floor. In the back of his mind L thinks that maybe he should fold them before they wrinkle but the thought is put on the back burner as B pushes L back to the floor, a snarl on his lips. B is all bone but he pins L down with ease, even when the older detective wiggles under him, bucking his hips. 

It’s a grasping, grappling affair with L’s curved spine and quick breathes born of B’s clawing hands and wicked eyes. When B bares his tender heart L’s lips just curl with distaste. 

B hates it, hates L. 

“W-wait.” L’s voice is as fluttery as his heart. B never bothers with lube, his pain tolerance is very high and his empathy is very low. L manages to grab some from the bedside drawer with shaking fingers. B allows it but he knows L deserves much worst then going in dry. 

B enters him with a brutal suddenness. L is flushed and shaking, an emotional state that he usually can’t stand but B makes it tolerable somehow. And B, for all his coy reserve and pained quietness he can’t stop himself now. B was meant for cruelty. There’s something pathetic in B’s lack of control, just like they’re something pathetic in L’s excess of it. B wraps his fingers around L’s throbbing cock as he thrusts.

They fuck, moaning and whining and B swears in harsh tones under his breath while L struggles with his clever quips between rushed breaths. B exasperates the issue by timing the rhythm of his hand job around silencing L and he does it extraordinarily well. All his metaphors blur and he curses B right back for making him lose track of an activity as simple as speaking. 

The best detective in the world cums in the hand of an up and coming killer. 

They fall back into the bed, drained and panting. They don’t say anything as their sweat dries. L makes a point of not looking at B very closely but B does the opposite. B is all hard eyes and clenched fists as he lies beside L. He gets up mechanically and dresses, leaving without a word. L watches him go and when he can no longer hear the sound of B’s retreating feet, he goes back to his computer as if it were any other day. 

It’s the last time L sees him. 

A few months later he gets word of murders in Los Angeles and he knows without knowing quite how that it was B. His first murders were a bit sloppier then L had expected them to be but they did have a certain artistic flair, as morbid as it is, and L could tell immediately that it was B. B had slashed numerals on a man’s chest. He had drained the blood from a young woman. He had plucked a child’s eyes from her head and crushed them beneath his heel.

In the end, he burned on a pyre of his own building and died like a dog in a prison cell, like the monster he was. 

But L still mourns, with a heaviness in his heart that he hates.

The world goes on.


End file.
